Virginia Woolf: A Precursor Of Modern Feminist Literary Criticism

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is not only an outstanding English novelist but also an important precursor of modern feminist literary criticism of the twentieth century. Her unique female consciousness runs through the whole literary works. She expresses her malcontent feelings with sharp style of writing in A Room of One's Own (1929), Three Guineas (1938), and Orlando: A Biography (1928) and so on. These works embody her unique female consciousness and advanced feminist ideas. Hence, she is regarded as the important precursor of modern feminist literary criticism, and the founding mother of the contemporary debate. The thesis is aimed to discuss the representation of Virginia Woolf's unique female consciousness in her literary works.In Chapter 1, the author first introduces the social background and sources of thought of feminist literary criticism, and discusses Anglo-American feminism and French feminism. Feminist literary criticism emerged in Europe and America in the late 1960s and 1970s, which was the literary product of the Second Women's Liberation Movement. It is a woman-centered criticism, and it takes woman as the object of study. Its primary task is to explore the female literary tradition. It discusses female consciousness ignored by male writers, studying the expressing way possessed by the female, concerning female's contemporary condition of writing, denouncing the oppression over the female imposed by the man-centered patriarchal culture, and advocating the unique feminist writing method. The two major theoretical sources of thought are the great change of western literary theory, which provides it with much light, and the theory created by the important feminist precursors, such as Virginia Woolf in England and Simone de Beauvoir in France. Feminist literary criticism could be divided into Anglo-American feminism and French feminism basically. The author introduces the main representatives' viewpoints of the two Schools.Chapter 2 emphasizes Virginia Woolf's unique female consciousness. First of all, the author briefly introduces the sources of Virginia Woolf's female consciousness, and they are social background, family background, and the radical feminists around her. Then the author lays stress on the analysis of the representation of female consciousness in her literary works. Firstly, she explores the great tradition of female literature, and discovers that there is an independent and longstanding female literary tradition in history. Virginia Woolf realizes that the women writers in the nineteenth century often express their personal grievance in the novels. However, after entering the twentieth century, the women writers begin to "use writing as an art, not as a method of self-expression", and pay more and more attention to the essence of the art- "freedom and fullness of expression". Secondly, she discusses the relationship between men and women, and she believes that they should be equal in society, and indicates the final goal of feminist struggle is to "deconstruct the death-dealing binary opposition of masculinity and femininity". Meanwhile, she implies the relationship between men and women by analyzing the characters of Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay. Thirdly, being oppressed by the patriarchal society, women lose the right of discourse. Virginia Woolf demands to break the traditional discourse pattern and searches for women's own language. She employs various original narrative skills to recreate women's own language in her literary works. Fourthly, she emphasizes the importance of women's writing, and she advocates women's writing positively. She also raises a series of problems about material factors and cultural atmosphere for women's writing. Fifthly, facing the dilemma of women's writing, Virginia Woolf posits the famous theory of "androgynous vision", and the author makes a further analysis of the theory of "androgynous vision". Moreover, the author indicates that Orlando in Orlando: A Biography (1928), Lily Briscoe and Cam Ramsay in To the Lighthouse (1927) are a...